Hi.
A good few years ago I bought a Pye VT17 from a chap whose dad had bought the set from Ayrshire Wireless in the mid 50's. It had been installed by a late engineer friend of mine Joe Childs who lived in Kilmaurs the neighbouring village to me. The set also came from Kilmaurs in Irvine Road. The chap I got the set from was eventually given the set from his dad sometime in the late 60's when they up graded to a dual standard set. He was given the order not to meddle with the main aerial. So the lad was able to put a "rabbits ears" aerial in the loft which enabled him to get excellent BBC 1 pictures from Kirk 'O Shotts on Channel 3 but STV from Black Hill on Channel 10 only just locked.
Being a bit of a dabbler he got hold of another tuner and cobbled it up as a Ch10 preamp and actually got acceptable results, (I'd have tried a 30L15 or a 30L17 first though). He kept the set for a long time even after he left home and got married. The VT17 hadn't been used for many years and then he heard about me so naturally I bought the set of him due to the connection. The Mains dropper was shot and the set needed a good old gutting out. I didn't have a dropper but adding in a PY33 HT rectifier seemed a solution it obviated the dropper and also stopped the HT surges these sets have on switch on. The original CRT was spanking, superb pictures. It was obvious at the time I just didn't have sufficient room for the set though.
The set eventually went to Norman. I got the set back on Sunday along with a spare chassis with good LOPT. So yesterday and today I have got the set back to working order. I made the decision to use the spare chassis rather than swap over the LOPT. Probably the wrong thing to do but you live and learn. The "new" chassis was multi faulted. I had to remove a "heater" boost TX, and rewire the heater chain, a 6v transformer had been fitted instead of the audio output transformer so that had to swapped, once running there was severe poor video LF response and very low audio. The poor video LF was at least two issues, the video detector had already been replaced with an unknown diode, so that was replaced with the correct one which vastly improved the contrast, the white spot limiter had been totally bodged so I basically snipped it out which made a vast improvement to the smearing, lastly the 2uf video coupling cap was duff only reading 0.9uf.
There is still very slight smearing, hard to see on a normal picture but seen on the test card. I think its caps on the AGC line that haven't been replaced. The low audio was an O/C germanium diode in the sound interference limiter. There are still a couple of things to do but in the end I have got the old set up and running once again...... this time t will be a keeper.
Cheers,
Trevor.
MM0KJJ. RSGB, GQRP, WACRAL, K&LARC. Member
Here are some quick off screen pictures. Tomorrow I will photograph the chassis ans some of the work done.
Cheers,
Trevor.
MM0KJJ. RSGB, GQRP, WACRAL, K&LARC. Member
Hi Trevor,
Your VT17 looks really excellent! One of the sets I had as a teenager was a VT7. It had really good gain and S:N and I can remember being impressed when receiving French TV on it.
BTW is that an interesting large bottle sitting to the right of the PYE?
Peter
Hi Peter.
I'm thinking the "bottle" you see is a light, it used to contain halogen bulbs and a SMPS for them it now has LED bulbs and runs off my 12 volt system, nice bright lamp and I can use it indoors in the event of a power cut.
Cheers,
Trevor.
MM0KJJ. RSGB, GQRP, WACRAL, K&LARC. Member
lovely set I’ve had one for many years
your set is excellent and gives one of the best pictures I’ve seen on one of these sets
